~ Reviews of film, theatre, music, art and all that

Monthly Archives: October 2010

Morecambe
Written by Tim Whitnall
Performed by Bob Golding
The Lowry, 25 October 2010

This one-man show about the great comedian is a labour of love, a heart-felt tribute.

Bob Golding takes on an uncanny likeness to Eric Morecambe, the man who loved (and lived) to make people laugh. He tells his life-story and, like one of Ernie’s plays, it wasn’t always a bed of roses. It was a career that began in variety and ended on television, as a national treasure who was universally loved.

More jokes would have been welcome, but in truth you don’t really need the jokes and routines, they’re so well known. They’ve permeated the national consciousness.

Golding deserves a medal (gold) for how hard he works here. A terrific show.

The Tetzlaff Quartet consists of Christian Tetzlaff and Elisabeth Kufferath on violins, Hanna Weinmeister on viola and Tanja Tetzlaff on cello. This evening’s programme featured works by Haydn, Mendelssohn and Schoenberg.

Haydn’s String Quartet in C major (1772) was quite dazzling. It expressed constancy, a willingness to accept all. To hold the beloved, no matter what may befall, in an ardent embrace.

Shortly thereafter, there came the String Quartet in A minor (1827) by Mendelssohn. It was charming and pleasantly melancholic, but perhaps no more than that. A confession: this composer’s work has never really caught fire for me.

At the last we got Schoenberg’s String Quartet No.1 in D minor (1904-5), and with it one entered a quite different sound-world. Peril was a tangible presence. The listener was, as it were, taking stuttering steps across treacherous terrain, ‘stumbling upon the blood dark track once more’ in Yeat’s fine phrase. One descended into shadows, but in the end a kind of ravaged triumph had been achieved.

The Tetzlaff Quartet were terrific on the night, and they are to be commended also for the variety present in the works that they performed. Their performance of Schoenberg’s quartet was very, very special.

This was one of a series of concerts organised by the Manchester Chamber Concerts Society. For details of future concerts, click here.

Macbeth
By William Shakespeare
Song of the Goat Theatre Company
Capitol Theatre, Manchester Metropolitan University
27 October 2010

Despite the Samurai dress and the thrilling swordplay, an allusion surely to Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood, this version of the Scottish play resembles nothing so much as a satanic mass. The tyrant’s armour-bearer would have felt right at home.

True, the swordplay does come into its own, such as on the occasion when Macbeth does his ‘Is this a dagger which I see before me?’ shtick and when he is cut down by Macduff at the end.

Anna Zubrzycki as Lady Macbeth gave the outstanding performance, keening inconsolably over her fallen husband. And Rafal Habel’s quivery, tremulous music contributed considerably to the atmosphere. Peril, treachery, despair: it was all present in the music.

If there is one regret it is that the scene (4.2) where Lady Macduff pleads, ‘I have done no harm’ has apparently been cut from this production. It gives a voice to the victims of violence and war and provides another, much needed perspective on Macbeth’s (mis)deeds. There’s plenty of contemporary resonance to the plea too, of course.

Overall, a definite thumbs-up to this production. It was a rewarding experience.

Macbeth is at the Capitol Theatre until 29 October and then showing in London and Brighton during the bulk of November. Details are here.

Chess
Music by Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus
Book and Lyrics by Tim Rice
The Lowry, 26 October 2010

This is a majestic production of Andersson, Ulvaeus and Rice’s musical of the royal game.

If chess seems a weird subject for a musical, well, you probably haven’t seen many musicals. It is usual for musicals to explore curious byways, to waltz in the ballroom of transgressive absurdity as it were, with the juxtaposition of nuns and Nazis in The Sound of Music being a case in point. That’s still probably the one to beat, actually: the Holy Grail, the high water mark.

There were excellent performances here, especially from Shona White as Florence Vassy, Trumper’s second, and David Erik as the arbiter.

The story, which concerned romance and political intrigue centring around a couple of world championship matches, was fairly compelling, though the Cold War shenanigans seemed somewhat dated. Among the fine songs were ‘Pity the Child’, ‘One Night in Bangkok’ and ‘I Know Him So Well’.

A terrific evening’s entertainment.

Chess is showing at The Lowry until 30 October. Full details are here.

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A Town Called Panic
(Panique Au Village)
Directed by Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Partar
Belgium, 2009
Cornerhouse, 17 October 2010

Still from A Town Called Panic

When I was a boy, I used to play with Airfix soldiers and make up stories about them. Adventures, tales of derring-do.

One of my favourite soldiers was, I remember, a commando wearing a cap or balaclava, who was frozen in the act of throwing a grenade. And the helmets of the German soldiers, though sinister, seemed somehow beautiful: gracefully curved.

This impossible-to-summarise film is an animation about two such toys, Cowboy and Indian, and the rather debonair horse (another toy called, naturally, Horse) that takes care of them. Their adventures are convoluted, pleasingly absurd, yet as finely wrought as the new fangled invention that makes unsliced bread toastable. And on some level they are coherent, logical and inevitable.

The trio live in a world that is unlike, yet like, our own. They journey to the centre of the earth, it seems like, and later find themselves paddling along the ocean floor.

The Gypsy Bible
Music by Joe Townsend
Words by Alasdair Middleton
Opera North
The Lowry, 24 October 2010

The finest moment in this show comes when Rhiannon Meades or Nadia Morgan sings a song that has the refrain ‘Loveless was I born and loveless will I die’. It is the finest moment among a slue of fine moments.

The Gypsy Bible is set in a violinmakers’ shop and the conceit is that we, the audience, take on the role of the customer.

There is much about the history of the violin, its mysterious origins, and the symbolism of the tarot figures heavily too, for some reason (perhaps because of its supposed Egyptian origin?). We are told of pacts with the devil, regaled with more than one murder ballad and treated to much infectious, toe-tapping violin music. In short, we are given lashings of terrific entertainment.

And it was refreshing to see (and hear) the violin loosened from the confines of the orchestra and the string quartet. In The Gypsy Bible its plaintive, almost human cry soared high and free. A magnificent musical treat.

The Lady from the Sea
By Henrik Ibsen
Royal Exchange Theatre, 20 October 2010

Neve McIntosh bathed in a caesious radiance. Credit: Jonathan Keenan

An unexpected recognition to start with: for anyone familiar with Joyce’s great story, ‘The Dead’, it will be clear that, in writing it, Joyce was heavily influenced by this play.

The Lady from the Sea is about a marriage and the soul of a woman. It addresses the uncertainties of the human heart, its shifting alliances. It puts forward a surprisingly modern conception of the relationship between men and women; or rather, a conception of what is possible within the bounds of that relationship. And it is a vital play, on the side of life and art; Ibsen shows a wonderful awareness of the fluidity of the future, the immensity of the world.

What strikes one at the end about the play is its grandeur, its depth, its continuing resonance. Little wonder that Joyce had such a high regard for the playwright.

This was a riveting Royal Exchange production. The cast were excellent and I’d commend especially Neve McIntosh as Ellida, the eponymous lady, Reece Dinsdale as her husband Dr Wangel, and Jonathan Keeble as Arnholm, a lonely tutor. The set was quite bare and barren, consisting in the main of a wooden floor to represent a pier or a ship. There’s some difficulty in depicting the sea on stage, but Chahine Yavroyan’s caesious lighting did the trick. The second time I’ve had occasion to use the word ‘caesious’ in as many days.

The Lady from the Sea is at the Royal Exchange Theatre until 6 November. Details here.

And yet there were shadows before the darkness came…

This is a play about the magical flight and heavy collapse to earth of Enron, a company that made use of some rather dodgy financial practices. Since the whole financial sector has now been tarred with the dodgy brush, Enron was, in a sense, a trailblazer, a pioneer. A true expression of the American dream.

It is a good but not a great play. Corey Johnson is fine in the lead, but there are a fair few dodgy American accents on show and, somehow, the whole doesn’t really sparkle or catch fire. Mind, the sets are stylish and the lighting is spectacular. On occasion, the stage is bathed in a pleasant caesious hue.

Such a seductive spectacle, these elegant ladies dressed in green and magenta and canary.

At first it is simply the dance, gesture and pose that seizes one’s attention. That and the arrangement of colours: a coming together, a parting, a coming together once more. Like as the petals of certain flowers close at nightfall, and then open once more at dawn.

Then one’s eyes are drawn to the set, a triptych of frames, perhaps mirrors or windows. The central frame being the largest one.

This suggested that the key to the performance was to be found in the notion of self-presentation, the forging (in the sense of making and faking both) of a self with which to navigate the world and its capricious assumptions.

It provides one explanation for the title, at any rate: the necessity to edit the self, to modulate and contain emotion. Yet on consulting the choreographer‘s statement of artistic intent, I discovered a completely different rationale for the piece. There’s dance for you; it can be interpreted in myriad ways.

An intriguing, thought-provoking experience.

Edits is touring at a select number of venues throughout the UK. Tour dates are here.

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The Social Network
Directed by David Fincher
USA, 2010
Cornerhouse, 15 October 2010

Still from The Social Network

A guy loses a girl but founds a game-changing website worth billions. And since this is a Hollywood film he still carries a flame for the girl who jilted him.

David Fincher’s account of how Facebook came into being is fast-paced, enjoyable, exciting and sometimes moving. At a couple of points in the film someone says, ‘We don’t know what this [Facebook] is yet.’ A comment which aptly illustrates the Wild West nature of New Media.